Monday, February 6, 2017

Using Google Hangouts in the Classroom

I recently gave a presentation to our upper elementary staff on how to use Google Hangouts.  And while the focus was on how they can use it professionally to connect with teachers in other buildings or for some "just in time" support without an actual trip to their building, like all great teachers they wanted to know, "How can I use this in my classroom?"  So rather than simply respond with an email, I figured I would create a post.  Below are a few ways how teachers can find a way to use Google Hangouts in their classroom with their students.

Guest Teacher:  How about having a guest teacher for a lesson?  My guess is that students might be pretty excited to have a teacher from within our own school district be a "guest teacher" for a specific assignment or lesson?  Is there a teacher from another school building that is an expert on earth formation?  Why not invite them to present the lesson to everyone.  And if they don't know who the teacher is, they probably know a student or two in their class.  Students from 12 different classes getting the benefit of a teacher that is passionate about a specific subject area.

Form a Virtual Book Club: Classes that are reading the same book or materials can discuss novels together and recommend books to one another. Before the Hangout, have each class brainstorm questions they want to ask their book club partners. Then, send the questions to the other class before the meeting date to allow students ample time to construct their answers. When the classes meet, they each take turns asking and answering one another’s questions.

Participate in a “Mystery” Hangout: In this activity, two classrooms video-chat with each other, but do not reveal their individual locations. Before meeting online, both classes research facts about their own state and create clues about their location. Then, each class takes turns asking “yes” or “no”-type questions in a race to solve the mystery. To find classes to connect with yours, visit the Mystery Location Calls Google+ Community or reach out to members of the Connected Classrooms Workshop Google+ Community.

Work on Projects Together:  While most posts talk about connecting with students from another class, why not start with the people that we know?  We have grade level classes that are spread across 4 different elementary buildings.  Why not use a Hangout to connect classes within our own school district?  How about 4th grade students at Lincoln Park working with 4th grade students at Churchill?  Or 5th graders from Campbell working on a collaborative project with 5th graders from Ross Park?  No longer do we have to have "partners" in our own class.  Talk about a real world example of collaboration.

Invite Guest Speakers: Inviting a speaker into the classroom has never been easier … or less expensive. Video-calling enables anyone from around the world to “visit” a school. Also, as an added plus, Google Hangouts has the ability to handle up to 25 people in a video call using an Education domain. So rather than having a guest speaker into a single classroom, we can invite them to speak to all of our classes at the same time.

If you have any other ideas on how to use Hangouts in the classroom, feel free to share them in the comments below.  If you need more information, here’s a quick “Get Started With Hangouts” guide from Google.

The list above was copies/adapted from an original 2015 post from WonderTechEdu.


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